Anima Christi

My cousin Paolo died two days ago. We celebrated his funeral today.

At communion, we sang a hymn whose words go back to the 14th century. This Latin hymn, a staple of traditional Catholic spirituality, has known an extraordinary success worldwide in Roman Catholic churches in the last few years, through a very simple and moving musical version written by Msgr. Marco Frisina.

At first sight, a Creation Spirituality theologian should not be interested in this text. Filled with references to the Passion of Christ, it can be easily used to instill a faux piety based on the glorification of suffering. Here is the text:

Anima Christi, sanctifica me. Corpus Christi, salva me. Sanguis Christi, inebria me. Aqua lateris Christi, lava me. Passio Christi, conforta me. O bone Iesu, exaudi me. Intra tua vulnera absconde me. Ne permittas me separari a te. Ab hoste maligno defende me. In hora mortis meae voca me. Et iube me venire ad te, Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te in saecula saeculorum.   Amen.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. Within Thy wounds, hide me. Separated from Thee, let me never be. From the malignant enemy, defend me. At the hour of death, call me. To come to Thee, bid me, That I may praise Thee in the company of Thy Saints, for all eternity.   Amen.

My interest in this prayer began when I first heard Frisina’s version, and I observed the deep emotional reactions of people singing and hearing it. Why — I asked myself — does this particular combination of text and music hold so much power? Indeed, I was touched by it, even though I felt that the pitfall of sentimentalism — the major enemy of healthy spirituality — was very close.

A cosmic element is present in this text, as the faithful individual hopes to be called after death in the company of the saints and Christ himself — I would say “the ancestors” to clarify the anthropological meaning of this point. Many times indeed, during these days of grieving for my cousin, people have referred to his joining the company of those in the family who have already died, such as my own mother and father.

Yet in the main, this prayer talks about the humanity of Christ, not his divinity. The starting point, the soul of Christ, is a peculiar element. Since the 5th century, Catholic theologians elaborated the notion that Jesus Christ had a human soul, that is, he was not just a human body conjoined with the divine spirit, but a person fully endowed with all human faculties, such as thinking, feeling, and moral agency. Yet prayers mentioning or even addressing the soul of Christ are rare.

The other human elements of the person of Jesus that this prayer references are his body (broken), his blood (poured out), the water flowing from his side together with the blood (when his heart was pierced), and finally his wounds. It is a depiction of extreme physical and mental suffering, enhanced by the very fact that Jesus had a human soul capable of human suffering.

The believer, however, is not invited to imitate the suffering of the man Jesus. On the contrary, the believer asks to be saved, sanctified, washed, inebriated, comforted, and finally sheltered within the wounds of Jesus. There is ecstasy here, together with a deep yearning for peace. There is a beseeching to the divine Jesus, but no explicit reference to the risk of damnation, or punishment and torments, which one might expect from a late Medieval text. Truly, Christ in this prayer is both fully human and fully divine. In other words, I see this prayer as a deeply spiritual version of the Christological dogma.

Putting together my exegesis of the text, my inquiry into several video versions of Frisina’s musical version, and my own experience in-person, I can say that the reason for the success of this prayer today is our need for a deep emotional connection to our wounded humanity, through which we can glimpse the divinity.

The via negativa of Creation Spirituality — much different from suffering for its own sake, or suffering as payment for one’s mistakes to a cruel divinity — is the main key to breaking the impasse into which humanity has gotten itself, at least in the West. It can be paralleled to Jung’s notion of feeling. Unless we feel our pain deeply and therefore the pain of others — humans and all others — there is no hope.

Is there such a thing as a “saving suffering”? When answered in the affirmative, this question has often led to the glorification of suffering itself, which is abhorrent to any healthy-thinking person.  But the notion of a firstborn brother among many (Romans 8:29) who has entered and exited the gates of hell, who can be compassionate because he has known deep human suffering (see Hebrews 2:18), is a piece of wisdom coming from the earliest Christian sources which we would do well to consider.

We need people who understand our pain, and these are the only people who have travelled through their own pain. But when this happens, when our suffering is welcomed and embraced, it is not only our humanity that is involved. There is something in this kind of compassion that is truly divine.

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Banner Image: One who has passed the gates of hell and can relate to suffering: before his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ grants salvation to souls by the Harrowing of Hell. Fresco by Fra Angelico, c. 1430s. Wikimedia Commons

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Queries for Contemplation

What is your experience with your pain being embraced, and with you embracing the pain of others? 

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Stations of the Cosmic Christ 

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